Jackie Van Nice

E-Learning Goodness by Jackie Van Nice

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A Template Unification Plan (+ Free Template!)

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Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s challenge is to take three disparate templates and create one peaceful template whose elements can coexist in harmony. An ambitious goal, but I was up for it.

The Existing Templates

I chose three Storyline 1 templates from the Downloads section of the ELH site: Nicole’s Click-and-Reveal template,  Tom’s Storyline Tabbed Notebook, and Tom’s Storyline Decision-Making Interaction. Why these?

  1. I could see them working well together as a main menu, detailed content holder, and a quiz.
  2. Their color schemes were roughly similar.
  3. Their (flat) image styles were similar.
  4. I knew that if I used them as I intended, I could stay true to their functionality.

The Before & After

Before: Nicole's Template

Before: Nicole’s Template

After: My Main Menu

After: My Main Menu

Here are captures of the original templates next to my made-over and unified template. How did I get them to peacefully coexist?

A Unified Course

As mentioned, one acts as a main menu, one as a content holder, and one as a quiz. Together they comprise the elements of a basic course.

Before: Tom's Submenu

Before: Tom’s Submenu

After: My Submenu

After: My Submenu

A Unified Theme

I began at the end with Tom’s shipping quiz. I then worked backwards to think of a general way to present info about shipping documents, then backwards to consider what kind of company would be training their people on shipping docs, then backwards to think of how they might start out the training.

Unified Fonts, Colors, and Images

I chose two of the existing fonts (Rockwell and Trebuchet), a simple color palette using a few of the existing colors, and stuck with the existing flat image style throughout. It helped that I made them all the same story size, too.

Before: Tom's Decision-Making Activity

Before: Tom’s Decision-Making Activity

After: My Quiz

After: My Quiz

See it! Download it! Try it Out!

Want to see some carefully-brokered template peace? See the demo here!

And download the free template here!

Giving and Getting Free (and Beautiful!) Images

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If you’re an Articulate E-Learning Hero who’s also a designer you need good images and appreciate the benefits of a community whose members share their work and expertise.

#red challenge

#onaboat challenge

The morgueFile Community

You probably know morgueFile as a place to get free images, but I never knew their intention was to have a give-one-take-one sort of self-sustaining community. I thought their contributors were professional photographers and it never even occurred to me they’d want my contributions!

Since I’ve used some of their community’s photos to good effect for recent Articulate #ELHChallenge demos about digital magazines, freelancing tips, and ways to survive the holidays – I thought it would be fun to give back, too.

#sweet challenge#blueskies challenge

A Quick & Easy Way to Contribute

(Update: I’m no longer seeing the app or finding images I’ve contributed – but they’ve still got lots of images you can use!)

Last week I found out about their morgueFile #Quest app for iPhone*. Each day they issue a daily challenge (“red” for example), you snap a photo to answer it, upload it, and voilà! You’ve shared your work in a quick and easy way that helps both you and others.

Lucky for me I took a week of vacation right after discovering the app, so I had time to play with it and had oodles of fun taking pics and entering them into current and past challenges. You can see some of them on this page and get a glimpse of my vacay at the same time!

#santacostume challenge#framednicely challenge

The Win-Win-Win-Win-Win

Not only do I find it more motivating to take pics with the app like this, but I get to be creative in a different way, I have more photos to use for my own projects, I have new sources of inspiration, and it makes me happy knowing that someone else might benefit from these little bits of color and light I’m sharing too.

If this sounds like fun, you might want to give it a try! They even have a Classroom where you can learn more about the basics of photography and how to take better pics, if that’s your goal.

MorgueFile Quest App

*You don’t need the app to contribute to the site, of course! You can upload your contributions via any browser.

Create Your Own Pictogram Characters (With Free Character & Slider Files!)

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Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo

This challenge is to create your own characters in pictogram style. You simply take basic shapes (I used PowerPoint) and mold them until you have the custom characters you need.

 The Idea

Inexplicably, the only characters I was motivated to pictogram were the Dapper Dans – a barbershop quartet at Disney. David Anderson was clear that these characters should be “aligned with an industry”, so apparently I opted for the entertainment industry’s thriving barbershop sector; strolling division.

The Approach

After finding an image of a Dapper Dan I brought it into PowerPoint and started slapping basic shapes on it to mimic the outlines. Then I added some color, smaller details, and used images of striped fabric as the fill for their vests.

Dan Before

Dan Before

Dan During

Dan During

Dan After

Dan After

Mike Taylor's Helpful Video

Mike Taylor’s Helpful Video

Mike Taylor’s blog post explaining how he created his own pictograms – and especially this video he did to demonstrate – helped me a lot. Specifically, I’ve never been satisfied with the amount of control I’ve had over editing points on shapes in PowerPoint, but starting at 7:20 in the video he reveals finer points I never knew about, and that was a big help. Thanks, Mike!

State Change: The Dan's Stance & Note Color Change When Selected

State Change: The Dan’s Stance & Note Color Change When Selected

The Slider

I guess I didn’t get enough of a slider fix in last week’s challenge, and this one was just asking for it. The idea of having each stop be a different vocal that harmonizes with the others seemed like a good idea, so I roped Dan Sweigert into recording some quick audio and was off to the races.

I set it up so that when a Dan is selected (1) his audio plays, (2) he changes to a singing stance, and (3) the note on the musical notation below him changes to match his outfit. Those image changes are set up as states, and they’re triggered to revert to their normal states once the audio stops playing.

Have a Look & Listen

Here’s the finished product. Have your audio ready and enjoy the performance!

Download the Free Image and Slider Files!

In case these might help you in your own work, you can download the PowerPoint source file with the customizable pictogram characters and download the Storyline singing slider file, too. Have fun!

The Challenge of Storyboarding (+ Free Template!)

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Visual Storyboard Template

Visual Storyboard Template

This week’s Articulate challenge is to show how you storyboard and to share some of your favorite tips.

Visit this Storyboard’s download page if you’d like to try it!

How I Storyboard

Most of the Time: Prototype

I normally create a quick prototype in Storyline to communicate my design. You can document what you’d like the user experience to be all day long in a written storyboard, but it never conveys the end result as effectively as a demo.

Some of the Time: Visual Storyboard (Try Out The Template!)

Sometimes I’ll do a visual storyboard in PowerPoint, which works pretty well and most SMEs seem to like working with it.

Almost Never: Text-Only Storyboard

I’ll receive text-only storyboards from clients as a way to give me their basic content, but I don’t spend time creating them myself.

My Storyboarding Tips

  1. Communicate your ideas in the clearest way possible. For me this usually means spending time creating a working prototype rather than documenting how I’d like to build something.
  2. Storyboarding Course on Lynda.com

    Storyboarding Course on Lynda.com

    If you’d like an overview of the different types of storyboards and how to use them, you might want to check out Articulate Super Hero Daniel Brigham’s course on Lynda.com.

  3. Storyboarding Resources on E-Learning Heroes Site

    Storyboarding Resources on E-Learning Heroes Site

    If you’re looking for some free storyboard templates, the Downloads section of Articulate’s E-Learning Heroes site might have what you need.

Happy storyboarding!